Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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This Is My Childhood

This Is Paris by Miroslav Sasek

This Is London by Miroslav Sasek

This Is Rome by Miroslav Sasek

This Is Venice by Miroslav Sasek

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Cbr14bingo Series As mentioned in my previous review, I have been a Miroslav Sasek fan since childhood, and I think my own interest in language, history and travel can be traced back to the books in his This Is series — a collection of travelogues for children with delightful drawings and fascinating information. Sasek covers the sublime and mundane with a view to what might most interest a child, and in doing so he made the world, in all its diversity, seem an exciting place […]

Shady love

Dancing on the Volcano by Floor de Goede

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cbr14bingo Shadow Level 3 The shadow of a relationship hangs over our main character Flo, as he spends the first time away from his longtime boyfriend, Bas in Dancing on the Volcano. But of course, shadows play a metamorphic role in a few different areas: the shadow of working with others and the lack of consideration for each other, the shadow of “what if?” and literally the Italian volcano that looms over the village. While Flo is traveling, worried about issues with Bas, he is […]

“Having [the kids] in a confined space after traveling for thirty-six hours was like chain-smoking in a fireworks factory.”

We Came, We Saw, We Left: A Family Gap Year by Charles Wheelan

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I really love a good travel book. I also love to actually travel, but armchair travel is much more cost effective! We Came, We Saw, We Left is a travel book, but it’s also a family book, which had both pros and cons. The Wheelans, or “Team Wheelan,” as Charles often dubs them, are an upper-middle-class family from Hanover, NH. The father is a professor at Dartmouth, the mother is a school teacher/administrator, and the three children range in age from 13 – 18. I […]

April 2022 Leftovers

Batman, Volume 3: Death in the Family by Scott Snyder

DC: The New Frontier, Volume 1 by Darwyn Cooke

Batman: Curse of the White Knight by Sean Gordon Murphy

Batman, Volume 4: Zero Year-Secret City by Scott Snyder

Chances by Jackie Collins

Batgirl, Volume 1: Batgirl of Burnside by Cameron Stewart

Batman, Volume 5: Zero Year-Dark City by Scott Snyder

Sonny: The Last of the Old Time Mafia Bosses, John "Sonny" Franzeze by S.J. Peddie

The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer by Jennifer Lynch

Scoundrel: How a Convicted Murderer Persuaded the Women Who Loved Him, the Conservative Establishment, and the Courts to Set Him Free by Sarah Weinman

Call Me a Cab by Donald Westlake

Please See Us by Caitlin Mullen

The Bouncer by David Gordon

Blood on Snow by Jo Nesbø

Tough Luck: Sid Luckman, Murder, Inc., and the Rise of the Modern NFL by R.D. Rosen

Concourse by S.J. Rozan

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Here are the books I read in April that didn’t merit a full review… Batman, Vol. 3: Death in the Family **** Reading a Batman-v-Joker comic is perfect for April Fools Day. I loved Scott Snyder’s Court of Owls run but wasn’t sure how I’d feel about him doing a Joker story combined with the extended Batman Family (which I’ve never been interested in). But this is a good story, a creepy one that continues to burnish Snyder’s credentials on this series. DC: The New Frontier, Volume […]

I Like the Cut of this Guy’s Jib

Shadow of the Silk Road by Colin Thubron

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When I was younger, I adored maps.  (OK, still do.)  At that time, one could check out bound collections of the National Geographic from the local library, and it was the 1920s – 40s collections that enthralled me, because they had maps.  Glorious detailed maps, where there were plenty of empty areas, and the idea that no one knew what was actually there enthralled me.  No one connected with the National Geographic Society, at least.  And one of my favorite such zones was Central Asia.  […]

Random Randomness with Random People in Random Places Randomly

A Carnival of Snackery: Diaries 2003-2020 by David Sedaris

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A Carnival of Snackery: Diaries 2003-2020 by David Sedaris is basically what you’d expect from the subtitle and if you’re familiar with the author. It’s really just random collection of things seen or thought by the author over 17 years. The title doesn’t become clear until March 2013 and that’s never explained. But that’s probably the point, to make you try to reason it out, if there is actual meaning or if Sedaris just thought it sounded cool. It reads kind of like a stand-up […]



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